AuthorTopic: "Shattered Glass" (Read 2054 times)

Tom's mentioned "Shattered Glass" a number of times. What's the appeal? Because it's about writers?

I saw it in the theaters when it came out, mostly because I'd been reading TNR on and off since the late 1980s. Charles Lane is actually a real creep so it's weird to see him as the good guy (Peter Sarsgaard) in the movie.

Sarah

I recently re-watched "Shattered Glass" and completely agree with Tom about it's high quality.

What the film does is very subtle, but it does it so well that it shouldn't be overlooked. When you take a piece of non-fiction (such as "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis) there is a tendency to amplify certain aspects of the story to make characters and events more relatable and dramatically interesting from a formulaic point of view. With "Moneyball", for example, the book is very clear-eyed and unsentimental, and what it addresses is so interesting that it doesn't need to involve small children (Brad Pitt's child in the trailer) or over-the-top proclamations ("What am I doing?") as the films' trailer does.

"Shattered Glass" is concerned only with the story of Stephen Glass's cooked stories and how he was discovered. They do not go into Glass's childhood, do not show him with family, they don't go to the home of Peter Sarsgaard's character except when it was necessary. There was a whole subplot waiting to happen about his wife and their child, but writer/director Billy Ray was smart enough to know that wasn't necessary.

I am very attracted to films like this, I would put "Zodiac" in the same category, as films that find the facts of a situation interesting enough and don't feel a need to tug on an audience member's heartstrings to keep them him or her interested.

Billy Ray's talent seems to make semi-non-fictional movies that are somewhere between ok and great. Shattered Glass and Breach are both competent and hold your attention but never become great.

However, I would recommend both.

I would too - perfect illustrations of the banality of evil on a much smaller, much less genocidal scale. Also, Billy Ray was able to get pretty great performances out of those two total blocks of wood, Hayden Christensen and Ryan Philippe.